Gretchen Parlato: Live in NYC (2013)

How we rate: our writers tend to review music they like within their preferred genres.

Live in NYC is vocalist Gretchen Parlato's eagerly awaited live recording and follow-up to 2011's excellent The Lost And Found (Obliqsound). Gretchen Parlato (Obliqsound, 2006) and 2011's In A Dream (Obliqsound) round out her catalog as a leader. That said, Parlato has been much more busy than would be indicated by her four recordings in eight years. She has appeared on some 70-plus recordings from Kenny Barron

and the band accomplish very much the same thing: sound untethered, floating among one another. The effect is one of spacial disconnection, with each voice easily isolated and heard. But when these disparately sounding elements are brought together and managed in the same time space (and at a given tempo and signature), it all makes sonic sense...very progressive sonic sense. That said, Parlato has been expanding vocal boundaries at regular intervals after having got her "standards" album (Gretchen Parlato) out of her system. That and her increasing associations with like-minded progressives like Eigsti and alto saxophonist David Binney

Parlato's material is derived mostly from her last two recordings with "Weak," "On The Other Side," "Butterfly" and "Within Me" being drawn from In A Dream while the standout cover of Simply Red's "Holding Back The Years," "JuJu," "All I Can Say," and "Alo, Alo" are from The Lost And Found. Her band is made up of her regulars from the last several years, thus the continuity from the last recording is maintained and built upon. Parlato's vocal approach is light and breezy, very user friendly. She pushes boundaries without offending any musically liberal or conservative sensibilities. Parlato's music is pure music, with genres aside. This is one of the futures of jazz vocals.

Track Listing: Butterfly; All That I Can Say; Alo Alo; Within Me; Holding Back The
Years; JuJu; Weak; On The Other Side; Better Than.